Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the availability for patients to message their GP practice using the NHS app for medical and appointment enquiries over lunchtime periods.

We want patients to be able to contact their general practice (GP) by phone, online, or by walking in, and for people to have an equitable experience across these access routes. This is a key intervention in the Government’s ambition to end the 8:00am scramble. From 1 October 2025, practices will be contractually required to keep their online consultation tool open for the duration of core hours, from 8:00am to 6:30pm, for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries, and admin requests. This will be subject to the necessary safeguards that are in place to avoid urgent clinical requests being erroneously submitted online. These requirements are set out in ‘You and Your GP’, a new patient charter, which will come into effect from September. Practices must provide a link to ‘You and Your GP’ on their website.

Patients can currently access their practice’s online consultation tool through their practice’s website. For 74% of practices this is also available via the NHS App, and this is due to increase to 95% of practices by March 2026.